The Disappearance of Joey Wheeler
by fricklefrackleXpress
Summary: Joey Wheeler has never had it easy. He doesn't have Yugi's Millennium Puzzle, or Kaiba's money, or the raw talent of either. But what he did have was Red-Eyes B. Dragon. His signature, favorite card. And then it was snatched away by the Rare Hunters after a humiliating defeat, and Joey had nothing at all. What went through his mind, before Tristan found him on the beach? By Nacchi.


_Joey is cornered by a group of sinister Rare Hunters who force him into a duel where if he loses, the Rare Hunters get his precious Red-Eyes Black Dragon! Though Joey pummels his foes with his mighty monster armada, eliminating life points isn't the only path to victory…_

 _-Wikipedia_

* * *

So this was it.

While he had been looking down at his feet trying to convince himself that he was taking some small steps forward, all of the disadvantages he had been trying to ignore had piled up. All those missed opportunities, all that wasted time, an uncrossable gulf stretching out from the shadows pooling at the edge of his vision. And now, stranded at the center of that ocean of empty time, he was entirely alone. Left behind by everyone. Left to carry out a life which existed only to be mocked and preyed upon by others. A life of endless defeat and boundless shame. A life spent crawling on his knees toward a goal too distant to ever reach, a goal that had now become formless through the haze of his tears. The life of a third-rate Duelist who had treasured a third-rate card.

This was where that dream ended, then. It was a cold comfort, the end of all this sickly, lurching movement. The peace after the final gunshot. Things would come to rest now, as the apocalyptic present settled. All that awaited him now was a heap of indistinct days, static and silent and soft. A bed of ashes, a gentle slope down through his remaining years.

Wasn't it supposed to be different? Hadn't he suffered enough? All his wasted sweat, and all his wasted tears. He could almost feel them backing up in his throat—all of his life, all of his efforts, rancid bile, worthless salt. It would all have been worth it—worth it a hundred, ten thousand times over—if only he could still pretend he were struggling toward anything. If only he could somehow convince himself that someday, a top-decked Polymerization might transmute the ruins of his life, the ruins from which he had clawed his way out and the ruins of himself, into some powerful Fusion Monster. Alas, it seemed that the unwritten laws of Yu-Gi-Oh, and of life, contained little in the way of consolation: Joey Wheeler was no rare card, no powerful effect monster. If he were a card, he would be the kind that children tossed into shoeboxes angrily upon opening their packs; a waste of flesh. Attempting to convince himself otherwise would only amount to standing on his head, that he might feel as though he were falling upward.

He would never be the world's greatest Duelist. He had always known, somehow. He wasn't even in the running—no one knew that better than him. Wasn't that why he kept on Dueling, despite his constant losses? Wasn't that why he had come with Yugi in the first place? Claiming that he knew his place, that he was content just to orbit greatness—he had merely been feigning resignation all along. That was why he was in so much pain now. All his life he had just been running from the shadow of his failures, or rather from the reflection of that abominable self he could only see as the sum of his failures—and, finally, he had stumbled. Joey knew the shape of this world. He knew that he was no champion, no hero, no chosen one. He was just a joke.

The sweetness of summoning Red-Eyes with the very rules he had just learned came back to him, fermented into something thick, sour and burning. He had been so sure, so confident that everything he had learned was coming to fruition as he blasted away his opponents' defenses. Well, perhaps it had. Nothing blossoming into nothing, ruin blossoming into ruin. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If he were a complete failure, then his crushing defeat and total destruction must have been the instant of his self-actualization.

The concrete was cold and damp against his cheek, soothing his bruised flesh. This was where he belonged, wasn't it? It was all his fault. If only he had never tried to stand in the first place, he wouldn't have come crashing down with a single blow. What were his weak legs for? The more he tried to keep up, the more he crashed against his boundaries. What was his weak heart for? Even when he tried to accept his place, he was always in pain. He wished that the vomit working its way through his body might spew out endlessly, carrying out all of himself, all of the meals he had ever eaten, all of his organs, all of the traces and expenditures and darkest intimate crevices of his existence until he were nothing more than an empty sack of skin. Then he could catch a breeze and fly away from this awful place, tumbling carefree through the chill night air like a discarded plastic bag.

And why shouldn't he nurse such worthless wishes? He had been denied this—this stupid, trifling thing, this tournament, this identity as a Duelist, this last pathetic attempt to build a sandcastle and call it a human life. This was no life. There was nothing to build, despite the endless permutations of cards and cliques and characters. Just a polychrome swirl of trash. Trash cards, a trash self, a trash life. Trash that he shoved down his throat, trash that he spewed forth. Consumption and creation, acquiring cards and slotting them into decks, it was all just a sickening parade of idiot distractions—empty rearrangements, empty choices, empty victories, empty defeats. Endlessly, painfully flashing color and darkness, and his feeble mind's sorry attempts to find some pattern or agency within.

"In the end, everyone is lonely."

"In the end, human life is always painful."

"In the end, everyone feels that way."

Not even Joey Wheeler could fool himself with those words. And so, there was no way back to the life he had known before.

How could he presume to comfort his sister? How could he continue to pretend that he had any right to live a human life at all? What value did a human life have? What value did a 2400 ATK/ 2000 DEF monster with a seven word description have? The tiny, glittering spark of hope in his life had been snuffed out instantly, fair and square. He had lost because he wasn't a good enough Duelist. He was unable to recover because he wasn't a good enough person. There was nothing else, no technicality, no injustice onto which he might clasp. Which was to say that he didn't thirst for justice but divinity, or at least the thin self-delusion of divinity necessary to survive in this world.

This life was empty, but wasn't he supposed to be a god playing within a cardboard box? He was always ending up hurt and beaten, but wasn't that supposed to make him stronger? Justice was a lie told to gild the whims of fortune and sadism, but wasn't he supposed to profit from that lie himself?

He had cast aside his cruelty, the hollow freedoms and pleasures of brutality. What awaited him now? A suffocating lifetime worse than death—no, worse, one indistinguishable from death. A lifetime with ash sprinkled on his head and coating his tongue. There was no warmth to be found in the cards. In the end, they were just glossy sheets of cardboard. There was no warmth to be found in his vaunted friendships. In the end, they were just reminders of his failures. And there was no warmth to be found within himself. Not anymore.

All this time, he had been stumbling forward on broken legs. Now that they had finally collapsed, he would have to pay the price.

Shifting his weight painfully, Joey looked up into the night sky. Hemmed in by two impenetrable walls of dark skyscrapers, framed by rings of wispy clouds, the moon shone a jaundiced yellow.

 _Hey, Yuge. I figured it out. Why I can never beat ya._

What value did Joey Wheeler's life have? He had come from nothing, had nothing, would never have anything. However he looked at the odds, the deck was packed entirely with trash. Sometimes, you just drew a bad hand right off the bat. Sometimes, you just had to play it out, knowing damn well it was a losing battle.

This world wasn't a fairy tale, at least not for him. _Gyakuten no Megami_ , the Goddess of Turnabouts, was just an underwhelming, Level 6 normal monster. And Joseph "Joey" Wheeler was just an underqualified, mediocre-at-best Duelist. He had never had a chance. But at least now he could finally bury those long-rancid childhood dreams he had dragged behind him for so long. His unreasonable hopes were well and truly dead. He had lost his Red-Eyes Black Dragon. He had lost everything.

Far away, as though leaking from a shattered dream, Joey could hear the sound of waves.

Even tonight, the water would be rising up from lightless depths and traveling untold miles, only to be shattered endlessly against the shores of an alien world. Even tonight, the waves broke and gray seafoam boiled atop the sand. The sickly moonlight would be scattering off their crests, glinting like the shards of a shattered blade.

Lurching to his feet, Joey began to stumble in the direction of that phantasmal sound. Though he couldn't explain why, though he was writhing in pain, he stumbled onward through the gloomy urban night. He couldn't think of his sister in the hospital. He couldn't think of anything. He could only continue his staggering journey, to the only place he could go. A place where the white sand would give way to black waves and the black waves would in turn fold into white sand. A place where all things ended, and all things began, twisting in swirling darkness.

Tonight, Joey Wheeler would go to the sea.


End file.
